Boyle-Breath by Murray L. Peters

No critic rating

Waiting for minimum critic reviews

Synopsis

"Teacher Mr Bernard Boyle (aka Bernard0 B0ilinni Ringhi0 di R0ssi of the Orb Zeronia) was almost out of breath, but never of magical Boyle-Breaths - good and bad! (‘BOYLE-BREATH’ - Bk1).
Bernard had just been made Acting Head at Roquefort High School, and Bernard0 had saved a teenage school suicide ‘jumper’ off Roquefort’s infamous ‘3Rs’ bridge, its Rogue-Rapids Roadbridge; but at the action-packed end of Bernard’s first term as a Depute Head (‘BOYLE-BREATH BREATHES’ - Bk2) the High’s Mr Damien Mortenson had resigned.
Aaron Brown somehow had survived; but Damien had had enough, especially his having found out that school bully-chief Nikki Dedson’s evil-mentor Cameron Mitchell was his own (previously sent for adoption) son!
Quite why Dedson’s helper-in-chief Aaron Brown had tried to kill himself was a secret known only to the Bernards and the boy himself.
A new school term beckoned, so schoolchildren and their families did too (indeed Boyle’s half-Zero children Rino and Zea were now both 13 – younger Zero girls catching up with ‘0’ brothers in actual human age as well as the usual intelligence and behaviour).
Bullying was continuing also; séances, ghosts and vampires, dream-haunting and clinical depression – but murder?
Social Workers, they’re always about somewhere, always for the best yeah?
Immigrants and gypsies, angels and devils, tattooists and em referees? IEDs…!
(But what if that Time-shifting sniper Mortenson had been able to pull the trigger on Lady Di…; what if the Confederates won the American Civil War...would Abraham Lincoln have become a Vampire Slayer?
That ‘Butterfly Effect’ theory, Ray, does it hold truth? Really, really?)
Father Stephen O’Reilly, what of him...a Time-travelling priest? Bless me Father!!
Remember HIM &HER? Mm well of course you do! What if Richard and Faith decided to get married and tell everyone everything in the end?!
Nikki Dedson: the Bully extraordinaire? Yes, he’s still alive, but he’s in two worlds now. Is he still a bully? Of course he is, and in both!

Boyle-Breath is a stinker, but with all those earthly pongs and perfumes at his beck and call he could, he had, and he would continue to help change noses, minds, lives, worlds!
What was Mr Boyle to do first though? How was his Zeronian ‘half’ Bernard0 to help? Where was a question: Earth &/or Zeronia? When was the subsequent problem...the Past, the Present; the Future??
They’d begin…at the End.

Having been a teacher to trade the author tries to capture the reality of school life in all its horror and humour. Also he introduces an 'alien' teacher who has special powers that seem to allow him to help students in the way all us teachers wish we could - by magic? A 'teach' for over 25 years, he tries to look at the problems of our children, our teachers, our world... but his tongue is firmly in his cheek... isn't it?!